QT Export with & w/o conversion

Howdy Ken -

Nice to be back to your site. Invaluable, as always. I see I have some catching up to do.

I'm giving some talks in which I incorporate clips of videos. I don't have Keynote, so I thought I would use QT. Questions:

1) I'm exporting dv NTSC 4:3 from FCP 5 (imac intel 2 Ghz duo w/ OS 10.4.10). Is there any reason to run the export thru conversion: a) using my own imac to playback; and b) if the playback is going to be on another computer.? In either case, if conversion is indicated, what would be the most lossless settings?

2) Sometimes exporting with QT conversion (to aiff or H.264 etc) seems to change the format to 16:9. Why? And how to avoid this?

Thanks Ken.

Just to double check: H.264 is totally (or virtually?) lossless, and comparable to QT w/o conversion?

My problem with QT w/o conversion is the widening as a result of pixel distortion. As I understand it, the H.264 will fix this, and be more compatible with Windoz PC's (?), but is there any loss of image quality from compression? I'm keeping the image dimensions to the original dv/ntsc.

For Hollywood type SD DVDs, you can not use H.264, Mpeg 2 only.

If you are talking about a data DVD, then H.264 would be a good way to go. H.264 is an excellent codec but it is not lossless. Maybe you are thinking about ProRes 422?

--ken

So if I understand you, for practical purposes H.264 is fine. But out of curiosity, is there anyway I can export losslessly w/o pixel (widening) distortion?